As the counting trends are pouring in, after months of protracted political duel between Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, the latter registered a signal victory. In a long campaign in which both the chief minister, Banerjee and Prime Minister Modi together with Union home .minister, Amit Shah criss crossed the state, the results indicate the duo's efforts have come to naught.

The results indicate Prime Minister Modi's "guarantees" had no takers in West Bengal. On the other hand, the voters believed in Mamata Banerjee's promises and overwhelmingly supported her party candidates. TMC’s tally hovered around 30 as against 11 of BJP. TMC got a vote share of 47 per cent- a rise by 4 per cent while BJP’s vote share declined by 3 per cent from 40 per cent in 2019 to 337 per cent in 2024 polls.

The other fallout of the resounding defeat of BJP in 2024 Lok Sabha polls is cutting down to size the leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari. If his shock victory against Mamata Banerjee in 2019 Assembly election at Nandigram had vastly added to his political stature, the defeat in Lok Sabha elections whose campaign he led from the front on behalf of BJP marked a blot in his career.

The massive victory gives the TMC a leg up in the 2026 Assembly elections. It strengthens the hand of the TMC leadership to stamp down on intra-party squabbles which sometimes threatened to mar its chances of success in this Lok Sabha elections.

In so many words, the resounding Lok Sabha victory minimises chances of squabbles when names of Assembly poll candidates will be announced two years hence. This campaign and the election there after rejuvenates the TMC's organisational structure before the Assembly elections.

The rising graph of TMC's electoral triumphs reflected in the counting trend, the "twin flower" nominees stand poised to democratically decimate their principal political rivals contesting on a lotus symbol. Not that Congress Left combine stood a chance before the TMC blitzkrieg as defeat stared PCC chief and five time Behrampore MP Adhir Ranjan Choudhury in the face.

Arguably, Isha Khan Chowdhury, the Congress nominee in Malda (South) Lok Sabha is likely to be the sole Congress MP to emerge victorious from West Bengal. Of the Left Front nominees, neither veteran Md Salim, the state party secretary nor the young faces like Srijan Bhattacharya at Jadavpur, Dipshita Dhar at Serampore or Saira Shah Halim at Kolkata(South) came near hailing distance of their Trinamool opponents shelving any possibility of the revival of the Left parties post 2024 elections.

The saffron camp was disappointed having pinned it's hopes on its Kolkata (North) nominee Tapas Roy to pull off a surprise victory against sitting TMC MP Sudip Bandopadhyay. Roy who had recently switched loyalty from TMC could not get the better of veteran Bandopadhayay thanks to intervention of the party supremo who nipped in the bud plots of sabotage.

In sum, it leaves neither BJP nor Left-Congress coalition to pose a formidable challenge to TMC in 2026 Assembly elections. The electoral misadventure of this Lok Sabha polls leaves the saffron camp with the status of a minor political outfit while the Left-Congress combine is now a marginalised one.

One significant victory was of Haji Nurul, the TMC nominee at Basirhat pitted against the BJP nominee Rekha Patra from Sandeshkhali who was allegedly exploited sexually and emerged as a symbol of protest. She got national exposure Besides being a political greenhorn, the assembly segments of her Lok Sabha did not have her party MLAs representing them. She lost by more than two lakh votes. Prime Minister Narendra Modi held meetings in her constituency and praised her fight against the TMC ‘oppression’

According to the observers, such had been the impact of the social welfare schemes of the TMC government like Lakshmir Bhander, Kanyasree and Rupasree that the former outweighed the negativity about the regime arising from allegations of cash for teaching jobs and rationing scams and senior party leaders being arrested or interrogated for their alleged involvement.

If women are a cornerstone of TMC read Mamata Banerjee's support base, the minorities forming 30 per cent of the state’s population is another. Banerjee and TMC candidates played on the Muslim community's fears regarding Citizenship (Amendment) Act and ensured a smooth passage for the party candidates in 10 to12 seats.

Hanging fire for nearly five years, the CAA was notified just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. The TMC campaigned that the Modi government had dragged it's feet on the Act to undermine it's "betrayal" of the Matua community.

In successive rallies, the TMC supremo said that CAA was a "trap" and would be followed by National Register of Citizens to weed out illegal immigrants. The speeches played on fears of a large section of people who had crossed over to India decades ago. The victory BJP nominee and a Matua himself, Santanu Thakur is a pointer that it did not quite hit the target though it did it's trick elsewhere.

The landslide victory enhances Mamata Banerjee's importance in the scheme of things of INDIA coalition of which the TMC is a member. It also papers over cracks in Trinamool which threatened to turn into fissures if the veterans like Sougata Roy and Sudip Bandopadhyay who had been with the party from its inception lost owing to under currents unleashed by party's younger sections. At the end of the day, Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee continued with her triumphant run that started from 2009 and continued uninterrupted excepting a break in 2019 Lok Sabha elections. (IPA Service)